Rocket landing

Following a series of impressive yet explosive attempts to bring down its giant spaceship built for interplanetary travel, SpaceX has today successfully landed its Starship prototype without exploding for the first time.

SpaceX’s rocket landings have now become so routine that it’s easy to forget such a thing had never been accomplished five years ago. Today, it sent up and welcomed back the same refurbished Falcon 9 rocket for a record sixth time.

​​Rocket landings have almost become routine for SpaceX since its Falcon 9 booster safely touched down on Earth for the first time in December 2015. But not everything went to plan for the company as it delivered supplies to the ISS today.

​Earlier today, SpaceX successfully launched and deployed its first two test satellites for Starlink, the rocket company's own constellation of thousands of communications satellites that aims to provide worldwide broadband internet access by 2024.